


onigiri and pineapple lip gloss

by taykash



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Genderbending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-25 03:51:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taykash/pseuds/taykash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jun is wooed by Aiba.</p>
            </blockquote>





	onigiri and pineapple lip gloss

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [love and green tea pastries](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8337400) by [taykash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taykash/pseuds/taykash). 



> Happy birthday, Jun-kun. ♥ I hope your 30s brings you nothing but goofy happiness.
> 
> Also, much like Nino's birthday, I am lazy and wrote something suggested on [my self-remix meme.](http://taykash.livejournal.com/10819.html). 
> 
> Also posted [here](http://taykash.livejournal.com/12469.html).

“So this boy,” Jun says to her senpai one day once the spring semester has started and the weather has turned warm enough to eat outside. They had just sat down to lunch, sitting under one of the numerous sakura trees on campus. Jun neatly unwraps the purple cloth her bento was covered with, revealing her dark green lunch box. “This boy in my history class asked me to lunch today.”

“Did you say yes?” Sakurai-senpai replies, already drizzling katsu sauce all over his store-bought cutlet. He licks his fingers, wiping them haphazardly on a napkin, before digging in.

“I said tomorrow, since I had class when he wanted to go,” Jun says, opening her bento to reveal heart-shaped vegetable sushi. “He’s kind of cute.”

“What’s his name?” Sakurai-senpai speaks through a mouthful of food, making Jun wrinkle her nose and pull her food even closer to her for fear of contamination through accidentally-spewed half-eaten rice grains.

“I’ll find out tomorrow,” she says with a slight smile, before taking a bite.

\-----

Jun never agrees to boys that asked her out, but when Aiba Masaki leans over his desk so far she thought he would fall, she surprises herself by saying yes. He doesn’t approach her with an overconfident swagger, nor does he stutter and shake – he simply greets her good morning and then invites her to lunch. Jun finds it refreshing, vastly different from the boys who normally try to get into her cleanly pressed skirts.

His hair curls gently around his face with the remnants of a soft perm, reminding her of a lion even though he laughs easily, his voice going up in octaves as he giggles. She takes the time to arrange her open bento in front of her, purposefully not looking at him as he grins. The last time she had been taken in so easily, it had ended with Sakurai-senpai rejecting her with a gentle apology and a pat on the head. 

"Your mom looks like a great cook," he says as he fills up his spoon with cafeteria curry, "the panda onigiri are really cute."

“Oh,” she replies, smiling down at her food. “I make my bento myself.” 

His surprised reaction, complete with lavish compliments on her cooking talent, makes her feel warm from inside out. 

“I find cooking relaxing,” she admits, “so I prepare my lunch before I go to bed.” She traces the curved side of her bento with a fingertip, reluctant to disturb her food after his admiration.

“I don’t live at home anymore,” Aiba says, roux staining the corner of his mouth, “and my roommate likes to eat cheap food from the conbini. I can just about make mabo tofu and gyoza, so designs like that are way above my level.” He grins at her, his eyes disappearing under his eyelashes. “You’ll have to show me other stuff you can make!”

Jun rests her hands on her lap, panda-shaped rice ball safely nestled in the cup of her palms, already planning her future lavish lunches.

\-----

“He came in today wearing a ponytail and glasses,” Jun tells Sakurai-senpai a few days later after she sits down next to him in their shared elective, an introduction level psychology class. “I’m meeting him for lunch again.”

“A ponytail and glasses, huh,” Sakurai-senpai whistles as he turns to hang his bag off the back of his seat. “It’s like he read your diary of what you like. You should keep an eye on him.”

“Shut up, senpai,” Jun replies pleasantly as she takes out her notebook and turns to face the front of the class.

\-----  
Jun’s heart races when ponytail-and-glasses-Aiba asks her to spend a Saturday with him. Jun has learned to be careful with her heart, to treat it like her greatest treasure, and she gives him only Saturday afternoon. 

She plays with her food, with the designs she meticulously cut out of carrots and seaweed, in order to mask her nervousness and excitement. When she licks her lips, she tastes her pineapple lip gloss and wonders if Aiba would like it.

She banishes the thought, and offers him one of her homemade cookies.

\-----

Skytree still towers over her far taller than she expects it to, despite already having spent time there. She jogs through the subway station sitting in its shadow over to the entrance, her heels clicking against the floor, and she spots Aiba right away. “Sorry to make you wait,” she calls.

He’s wearing a v-neck t-shirt and dark jeans and Jun wonders just how he seems to know everything she likes. 

They weave their way through families with screaming children and teenagers eating crepes through the observation deck. They make their way to a rare empty spot in front of the windows, standing close together. Jun presses her hand against the glass. “I’d like to come here at night,” Jun says, “it must be beautiful.”

“We can come here, if you’d like?” Aiba replies, and Jun keeps her eyes focused on the city laid out below them.

“I’d like that,” she finally says, and her heart flutters with anticipation.

\-----

After Jun gets onto her train, watching Aiba get smaller on the subway platform as it pulls her further away from him, she texts her best friend, Shun.

‘This is going too well,’ she types, even though she can already imagine Shun rolling her eyes at Jun’s pessimism. 

‘Yeah, a Saturday date at a romantic spot is an obvious sign of imminent tragedy,’ comes Shun’s reply. 

‘I’m on my way to your house,’ Jun sends, and doesn’t bother checking her phone again.

“I like that dress,” Shun comments when she opens the door, wearing a stolen pair of her boyfriend’s shorts and an overly large tank top. “You never let me borrow your good things.”

“That’s because every time I have, you wreck it somehow,” Jun shoots back, taking off her heels and politely setting them down in the entryway. “Don’t think I’ve forgiven you for that time you broke my ring.”

“It fell off my hand,” Shun argues as she walks up the stairs to her room, “don’t buy heavy rings if you want something that will withstand gravitational pull.”

“Whatever,” Jun sighs, following Shun into her messy room and throwing herself onto the bed. She wrinkles her nose, then pulls out an empty potato chip bag from beneath her. “Nice.”

“I got hungry,” Shun shrugs, taking it from Jun and sitting down backwards on her desk chair. “So, tell me everything about your date. Did he buy you crepes? Did you make out in a Skytree bathroom?” She balls up the bag and sends it flying towards her garbage can; she misses and it lands on the floor.

“No and no,” Jun replies with dignity in her voice as she turns onto her side to face her friend, her hair fanning out over Shun’s pillow. “He bought me a green tea bean parfait and then invited me to eat at his parents’ restaurant.”

“So when’s the wedding?” Shun says with a grin, leaning her chin on the back of the chair. Jun groans and rolls away from Shun.

“No, but seriously, Shun…” Jun says to the wall, her fingers tracing the spirals on Shun’s colorful bedsheets. “This might be bad.”

“Why?” Shun starts to spin gently in her chair. “Since perfect Sakurai senpai rejected you because he had a girlfriend, so will this guy that’s obviously putting the moves on you?”

“You haven’t even met him, how would you know if he is or not?” Jun shoots back, rolling onto her back to stick her tongue out at Shun. 

“He keeps asking you to have lunch with him and took you to the tallest observational deck in Tokyo,” Shun says exasperatedly, running her hands through her fried blonde hair, an experiment born from emulating a character from her favorite yankee drama, ‘Mafia Professor’. “It doesn’t sound like he’s just in it for your fly style.”

Jun laughed, throwing one of the many pillows littering the bed in Shun’s direction. “Shut up.”

\-----

Lunch with Aiba becomes a highlight of Jun’s week, meeting at the same spot (in the shady area outside of the cafeteria by the vending machines) every time and walking together to choose a table.

But one day, as they chat idly about their classes, Sakurai-senpai sits down next to Aiba. Sakurai-senpai smiles pleasantly, his Important Senpai smile, but Jun can see the older-brother protective glint in his eye. 

“Aiba-kun’s in my fashion history class, senpai, he’s the one I told you about,” Jun says, a touch of warning in her voice, but Aiba looks up at her from his food with such big eyes that she shies away, looking at Sakurai-senpai instead.

“You told him about me?” he asks, and his grin is so wide that Jun feels like she needs sunglasses.

“Oh! Skytree boy?” Sakurai-senpai laughs, and Jun flicks rice at his face. 

When Aiba asks shyly about her relationship with Sakurai-senpai, Jun gets so flustered she makes a sound that she’s never made before. “No! What? No! He’s just my senpai! No, he’s dating Naka-senpai…” The heat in her face tells her that she’s bright red with embarrassment and she clutches her chopsticks tightly.

“Freshman year of high school I did have a crush on Sakurai-senpai,” she explains to Aiba, who is looking at her intently, “but he was a junior and busy and anyway, he and Naka-senpai have been together since they were born, I think.”

Jun watches Aiba’s expression brighten, a feat considering his million-watt smile, and she relaxes. There are half-moons in her palm where her fingernails dug in with nervousness, but Aiba drips hamburger sauce all over his pants and the nervousness dies in the waves of his laughter.

\-----

Sakurai-senpai’s default date spot is Yokohama, though Jun had never been there without a group of friends. Being with Aiba along the waterfront at night, the neon colors from the amusement park illuminating their skin, makes her understand what Sakurai-senpai sees in this part of the country.

Their conversation exists quietly between them, puffs of sound meant for no one else, but Aiba takes her hand and she links her fingers through his and Jun doesn’t remember a word that has passed between them.

They walk together, hands clasped between them, and though the pier is crowded with people on such a breezy spring night, Jun has eyes only for Aiba. Inside the Red Brick Warehouse he buys her a pair of black shell earrings that shine iridescently in the light, and she removes her gold earrings to wear the ones he bought her instead.

“Let’s ride the Ferris wheel and see the lights from inside,” Aiba suggests, and she squeezes his hand with a smile.

At the top of the wheel, with the Port of Yokohama spread out and glittering beneath them like diamonds, they share their first (and second and third) kiss. Aiba’s mouth is soft against hers and his kiss is shyer than she thought it would be.

It’s perfect.


End file.
